Film Reviews DRAMA EVERYBODY’S FINE (12A) 99min ●●●●●
DRAMA THE LAST STATION (15) 112min ●●●●●
It’s 1910 and the great Russian writer and aristocrat Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) has become a cult dissenting voice in Tsarist Russia. His writings and teachings on non violent resistance, state and property rights, chastity and vegetarianism are so fundamentally progressive and anarchic (albeit of the pacifist and Christian variety) that his long time publisher and friend Vladimir Chertov (Paul Giamatti) has established a small community of Tolstoyans to inherit and carry on the work of the ageing leader. Tolstoy’s wife Sofya (Helen Mirren) has other ideas.
There’s nothing like a tale of piety and inheritance to bring on the tedium. Luckily The Last Station, adapted from Jay Parini’s 1990 novel, is actually an all too universal tale of misplaced loyalties and how love, however ancient and eccentric, can offset the obsessions of old age. Our beloved Dame Mirren dominates proceedings as the passionate, neurotic, ever protective wife and wilted muse Sofya. She turns the film’s dynamo and when she is away from the screen the air grows heavy with conjecture and exposition. She’s the crazed firefly hovering over a gloomy pond of reverence and sanctity.
In fact it is easy to forget that our narrator and guide through this nest of misplaced godliness is Tolstoy’s newly arrived secretary Valentin Bulgakov, played with subtle reserve by James McAvoy. As exemplified in his flawed but interesting 1995 adaptation of Rose Tremain’s Restoration, director Michael Restless Natives Hoffman has a problem with character arcs and narrator progression, so distracted does he become by detail and flounce. As historical fiction this is a little bloodless but enjoyable enough. As a study of aged love and lust undermined by creeping agenda it is commendable, and a little overdue. (Paul Dale) ■ General release from Fri 19 Feb.
Robert De Niro drags his grumpy old man routine into this well-meaning but utterly dull remake of Giuseppe Cinema Paradiso Tornatore’s Stanno Tutti Bene (1990). De Niro has plenty of reason to put on his over-familiar raised eyebrows and trademark gurn as Goode, a man who realises that since his wife’s death his four adult kids don’t really spend any time with him. Surprise, surprise he decides to pay surprise visits to his four bambinos. He doesn’t like flying so he has to make the journey on the ground from New York to Chicago, Denver and Las Vegas. The messy flashbacks highlight what
a cantankerous dad Goode was and even today his kids still fear him more than they love him. Amy (Kate Beckinsdale) his high-powered executive daughter is hiding her failed marriage, musician Robert (Sam Rockwell) has dad believing he’s a conductor; dancer Rosie (Drew Barrymore) has a secret so huge it’s preposterous. For no good reason British director Kirk Jones (Waking Ned, Nanny McPhee) overplays the sentiment, but the greater mystery here is how a great and experienced actor like De Niro continues to play with amateurs. (Kaleem Aftab) ■ General release from Fri 26 Feb.
ALSO RELEASED Solomon Kane (15) 104min ●●●●● James Purefoy dons Solomon Kane’s Witchfinder General hat and sets out to bloodily revenge the murder of an innocent family who befriended him. Jason Flemyng, Pete Postlethwaite and Mackenzie Crook add quirky support to Michael J Bassett’s’s decent-if- generic film. General release from Fri 19 Feb. The Crazies (15) 101min ●●●●● Breck Eisner directs this timely remake of George Romero’s 1973 survivalist classic about a biological weapon accidentally discharged into the water supply of a small town, turning the inhabitants into rampaging lunatics. General release from Fri 26 Feb. From Paris With Love (15) 92min ●●●●● Jonathan Rhys Meyers and a shockingly bald John Travolta team up for the usual run- of-the-mill Parisian race–and–chase espionage potboiler. Travolta’s uncanny resemblance to 1920s Scots comic actor James Finlayson is the only talking point here. General release from Fri 26 Feb. Capitalism: A Love Story (12A) 102min ●●●●● Michael Moore’s new opus sees him going for broke by taking on the whole capitalist system. But without his old pal George Bush in the White House, Moore simply doesn’t have anyone to focus his righteous ire on, and Capitalism: A Love Story comes in a day late and a dollar short. General release from Fri 26 Feb. Freestyle (12A) 85min (unable to review at press time) Brit director Kolton Lee’s second feature, made under Film London’s Microwave scheme, stars Lucy Stanhope as Ondene, a young woman who falls for freestyle basketball player Leon Chambers (Arinze Kene) against her mother’s wishes. Will be reviewed at www.list.co.uk General release from Fri 26 Feb. (Eddie Harrison)
DRAMA EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES (PG) 105min ●●●●●
Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser add some high-powered star wattage to Tom Vaughan’s otherwise formulaic medical drama about a father’s desperate attempt to save his children from a potentially fatal disease. Inspired by a Wall Street Journal article written by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer
Geeta Anand, as well as her subsequent book, Extraordinary Measures is as heartfelt as you might expect, yet nowhere near as probing as it could have been.
It centres on real-life father John Crowley’s relentless attempt to manufacture a cure for two of his three children after they are diagnosed with Pompe disease, a rare genetic disorder related to muscular dystrophy. Fraser plays Crowley with the right amount of compassion and single-minded devotion, while Ford is the gruff, unconventional doctor who may have come up with a life-saving drug – a character who represents a composite of the many people Crowley dealt with in his battle to beat the clock.
Their odd-couple relationship engages but sometimes blurs the film’s focus
when it could have hit harder at the corporate wrangling that might have blocked their path. Vaughan’s unshowy direction thankfully doesn’t overdo the sentiment but does struggle to escape a TV movie feel. (Rob Carnevale) ■ General release from Fri 26 Feb.
48 THE LIST 18 Feb–4 Mar 2010